Electoral college votes show it’s over for Trump. But Republicans have other tricks up their sleeve

Expect one last GOP effort in January — and a strategy of voter disenfranchisement that continues way past this election

Electors ratify their cast election ballots in the House of Representatives chamber within the Pennsylvania Capitol Building on 19 December 2016 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania ((Getty Images))

Donald Trump is the biggest repeated loser in presidential history. There is no historical precedent for what we're seeing. An incumbent president has refused to accept the election results, launched a disinformation-driven attempted coup, and publicly and repeatedly failed to bend the law to his will. After over 50 court defeats for pro-Trump cases, multiple failed recounts, and Supreme Court rejections, it’s fair to say most of us feel like we’re in an electoral version of Groundhog Day.

Today, however, the electoral college certifies the indisputable fact that Trump will be a one-term president. It’s the biggest blow to Trump’s delusional beliefs yet.

At the time of this writing, key battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — have all cast their electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. At 5pm ET, California will put Biden over the 270 electoral vote threshold. By the time Biden delivers his speech tonight at 8pm ET, his incoming presidency will be further confirmed at 306 electoral votes.

This is a great moment for American democracy, but not a moment that shows the Republican Party in a particularly flattering light. It came in spite of President Trump's efforts to pressure GOP legislators to overturn the will of their voters and appoint Trump electors. It came in spite of Biden electors across the country facing death threats. It came in spite of Michigan having to close its Capitol building to the public due to credible threats of violence. And it came even after Stephen Miller promised "alternative electors," which Republicans delivered in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Fortunately, those alternative electors are just as credible as alternative facts.

In a normal election year, we wouldn't have needed to watch all this so closely. But if Trump's refusal to concede has done anything positive, it's given Americans an unsolicited public education on the mundane specifics of the electoral process. And now, all eyes are on January 6 when Congress is set to officially certify Biden's win. While Biden's presidency is now inevitable, Republicans do have some more tricks up their sleeves.

Led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), House Republicans are preparing to challenge electors on January 6. There is a process for this. If one member of the House and one member of the Senate file a challenge to a given slate of electors, it triggers two hours of debate, and then the full Congress will have to vote on whether to throw out those electors or certify them. President Trump appeared to endorse this strategy by tweeting out an ambiguous "thank you" to Rep. Brooks this week. Given the recent actions of House Republicans, it's safe to say there will be wider interest in this challenge.

One hundred and twenty-six House Republicans — over 60 percent of their caucus — went on the record backing the Texas case, which sought to overturn Trump's election loss in four battleground states. The case was also backed by 17 Republican Attorneys General. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) called this case a "seditious abuse of the judicial process." The Supreme Court seemed to agree, refusing to even hear the case last Friday and therefore stopping it entirely in its tracks. While some Republicans have said off the record that they knew the case would fail and what they said was merely a statement of loyalty to their party, they can't take back what was done. Many of these Republicans will likely make a lot of noise on the House floor when the challenge arises.

When it comes to the Senate, there aren't yet any Republican Senators jumping at the idea of challenging electors, but some have nodded and winked at it. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) hasn't ruled out the possibility of mounting a challenge and has already invited Ken Starr to testify at a hearing on Trump's election fraud lies. Meanwhile, Rep. Brooks has reportedly met with a half dozen Senate Republicans to try and garner support for the potential challenge, including Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).

To be clear, this will fail. Even if one House and one Senate Republican manage to mount challenges to multiple states' electors, there's no way that a majority of Congress would vote to throw out Biden's electors. Democrats control the House, so that's an impossibility. In the Senate, there are enough Republicans who have already acknowledged Biden's win (Romney, Murkowski, Collins and Toomey, to name just a few) to vote with Democrats. Vice President Mike Pence will be forced into the position of declaring that his dear leader has lost. Whether Trump likes it or not, it's over.

In the years to come, Republicans may try and distance themselves from what they did here. Unfortunately for them, Americans will never forget. Republicans are now permanently marked by their support for Trump and opposition to democracy.

For Trump, this was at first a real attempt to overturn the election and now it has become more of a fundraising grift. Everything we're witnessing from Republicans, on the other hand, is democracy-eroding performance art to placate Trump's fragile ego and play to Trump's base. But perhaps most importantly, this is all about laying the groundwork for escalated voter suppression efforts under the guise of combating imaginary voter fraud. This is why it's so important that members of the media push back on this disinformation. Republicans will claim they're changing election laws to restore faith in the election process, faith that their lies helped diminish.

We need to be vigilant. For many Republicans, the new strategy involves stealing future elections, not this one.